


i love him

by wishfulcanadian



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-05 01:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14605881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishfulcanadian/pseuds/wishfulcanadian
Summary: Tessa has loved every single version of Scott she's known for the last nineteen years, but it's the newest version of him with Clark Kent hair and clothed in Team Canada gear that makes her heart skip a beat.





	i love him

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Some explicit language
> 
> I'm aware I'm totally projecting on Tessa and Scott here and the people I've depicted them as in this fic may not be who they are irl but lemme have my fun, ya? 
> 
> Note: 1. Tess, if you're reading this, I love you and I'm sorry. 2. English is my second language so don't @ me if you spot weird grammar syntax 3. Actually, please do, because I'm trying to get better 4. title from 'i love him', the hauntingly beautiful song from 'les miserables'

Tessa has loved every single version of Scott she's known for the last nineteen years, but it's the newest version of him with Clark Kent hair and clothed in Team Canada gear that makes her heart skip a beat.   
  
At nine, he's the loudest boy at the rink who whizzes past everybody and launches into jumps with ginormous heights like it's the easiest thing in the world. Tessa's got her eye on him because he makes himself hard to miss with how loud he laughs at his buddies' jokes and how, at times, he refuses to change into figure skates for warm-ups and races his cousins in his ugly hockey ones.  _ Gosh _ , Tessa  _ hates _ how much she  _ loves _ watching him move to whatever jukebox song Alma or Carol plays on the radio and envies how effortless he makes cross-overs and transitions look like.   
  
Cara's already giggling with Jordan like  _ she's _ her sister and Tessa wills herself to not look at them stroking the ice, holding hands, when she hears her name being mentioned. Breathing deep, she digs her toe pick in the ice and waits for the other little girls to join her with Alma and start working on spins. Tessa's really looking forward to the two-foot spin the Moir boy is doing on the ice, subjecting his body to unnatural speed. She isn't aware she's glaring at him until Jordan comes to stand beside her and bumps her hips against Tessa's.   
  
“Cara and I have been thinking,” Jordan begins without much nonsense, looking at Cara who has assumed a similar position to Jordan's, except next to Scott. “You and Scott should be boyfriend and girlfriend.”   
  
Tessa's mouth drops open in shock and her cheeks begin to turn pink.  _ Boyfriend? _ Tessa’s never had one before - which is to be expected because she’s still seven and Kevin said she wasn’t allowed to have one until she was _ eighteen. _ Besides, boys - especially the Moir boy - are brash and don’t appreciate the finest things in life. Like the precision of ballet or the fluffiness of pink lace or the stillness of her family’s lake cottage in Ontario.   
  


Before Tessa can say anything however, Scott is shrugging like the very prospect of holding hands and  _ the kissing _ doesn’t turn his stomach. Like it does hers. Tessa has to purse her lips tight, so she doesn't upchuck on the ice.   
  
“Okay,” he says not even appraising her properly. Impatiently, he looks up at Cara. “Can I get back to spinning now?”   
  
Jordan is snickering into her mitten clad hands and Tessa’s eyes narrow. She has never been ignored before. Or flippantly dismissed. Turning her nose up, she says loud enough for her voice to be carried over to her new ‘boyfriend’, “I want to be Danny Moir’s girlfriend.”   
  
Scott stumbles out of his spin like he’s only learned it two days ago when he’s probably been doing it for two years, and Cara looks at Tessa differently. Like she sees her for the first time. Like she’s measuring Tessa up to see if she’s worthy.   
  
“We’ll see in a few years,” Cara says finally and pats Scott’s back. “Until then, you’re stuck with this one.”   
  
Scott scowls and Tessa gives Cara a pretty smile that lasts until Jordan nudges her towards him. “Go, talk to him,” she whispers and without waiting to see if Tessa follows her command, she and Cara make their way back to the boards, high-fiving and gossiping, their pigtails swaying as they pick up speed on the ice.   
  
Tessa looks at anywhere but at him, and he does the same thing. Some upbeat song that he’s familiar with, - and she’s not - is being blared from the speakers, and he perks up. Looking at her shyly, he just holds out his hand, hinting that she should take it.   
  
Tessa looks around nervously and on seeing that nobody but a couple of moms are paying attention, grabs his hand. His palms are sweaty, and he grips her too tight, but at least she’s skating on the ice instead of waiting in the middle of it for ten more minutes.   
  
His glide is powerful and Tessa struggles to keep up with his swiftness but apparently, her boyfriend is more perceptive that she gave him credit for and slows just a bit down for her strokes to match his. They’re just skating circles around the rink, but Tessa’s slowly warming up to the concept of having Scott as a boyfriend in the three minutes they’ve been an “item”. He’s not too tall, and he doesn’t drop her, so that’s a definite plus. Tessa’s good cheer vanishes when Carol blows her whistle so the previous group of boys in the novice level that were doing spins can exit for a quick time-out, and the ice dancers can start their practice.   
  
Scott drops the hand that’s been pulling her and Tessa stumbles. Before she can fall on the ice gracelessly, Scott steadies her by grabbing her shoulder.   
  
“Nice save,” Carol Moir yells and it's a miracle Tessa can hear her over the chatter of pubescent boys leaving. “Scott, your dad's here to take you home.”   
  
Tessa chalks the disappointment she feels when he rushes towards his mother without so much as waving goodbye to having to wait alone until her session starts.  _ Maybe _ , she reasons as she skates to where she was prior to Scott taking her hand,  _ her mother could ask Alma for private lessons _ . Surely it can't be worse than sharing a class with girls that won't stop talking or skating into her?   
  
Alma says no and invites Carol instead who proposes that her and Scott should pair up on the ice as well and try ice dance. Tessa isn't expecting that, and she worries she's going to miss being coached on jumps and laybacks, but Carol reassures her and her mother.   
  
“You can train to be a singles skater, too. Honestly, it's going to be a temporary thing. I'm still looking for another girl to partner Scott with.”   
  
Tessa nods and on seeing three pairs of adult eyes feels like a lady in control of her destiny.   
  
“Okay.”   
  
At the end of the Skate Camp, she learns that after skating with her for three weeks, Scott doesn't want to skate with anyone but her and so when Carol asks her if it's okay with Tessa, she knows from the brilliant smile Scott gives her when she says “Yes” that it's the absolute right decision.   
  
Months later, Tessa decides she likes Danny a lot when he gives her an encouraging wink before she and Scott take the ice for their first novice sectionals, but she loves Scott.   
  
Even if he's still loud and hangs out with stupid people. And likes hockey more than ice dancing. And won't speak a word to her.   
  
(But his eyes follow her even if he's with his mates, more often than not accompanied by a toothy smile. And he tells his hockey team he can't join them for a game because he's going to a figure skating competition with his girlfriend. And gives her nice flowers and kisses her cheek.)   
  
They don't last, though. He breaks up with her over the phone prompting their first conversation in seven months. Tessa almost wishes she still loved Danny.   
  
(It's still the longest relationship she’s been in.)

 

-   
  
Scott at eighteen is a beast.   
  
It was almost like his hormones went overdrive and in a single night gave him muscles that lifted her up with ease, a growth spurt that added definition to his small body, and a voice break that made her feel all type of things.   
  
He's cocky and on the precipice of greatness while Tessa struggles, like always, to catch up to him. They've already missed one Olympics because  _ she _ wasn't ready enough and Tessa doesn't want them to miss another.   
  
Anyway, Scott pulls girls like nobody's business, befriends college students that sneak him into bars while him and Jessica run circles around each other, and Tessa watches from the sidelines. The usual, really.   
  
Canton is a lonely place and even with Scott to make her laugh, she hates how she feels Marina constantly judging her footwork and Igor making her stand on a weighing scale every three days and putting her on diets that Tessa's sure any nutritionist worth their pedigree will never condone. Still. It's the price they're paying for gold, and she tells herself she should feel lucky they have two strong programs this season to show off their versatility and to peak at the right time.   
  
Except, she doesn't feel as lucky when they're doing the tango, and she is sure that she can feel Scott kiss the crook of her neck.   
  
Instantly, her spine forgets how to curve, and they both almost fall on the ice because of the abrupt snap of her body mid-lift, and Igor is barking at the sleepy intern manning the music system to stop playing.   
  
“What the fuck was that?” Igor roars, and Tessa can't slow her breathing down, and she's sure she's about to cry any moment.   
  
Then, Scott’s there in an instant before her, and staring down Igor who is never human at six thirty, and the local Starbucks isn't open.   
  
“We're taking ten. You need coffee. When you're back we'll do the entire run through before the hockey team comes in.”   
  
Igor glares at the pair of them, Scott in his white Adidas shirt that stretches across his chest, and his hair all over the place like he's just rolled out of bed and thrown on a shirt. Which, Tessa supposes, was actually what happened.   
  
“Not a chance in hell.”   
  
Scott's fingers dig into his palms, and he challenges Igor. “We’re taking ten. Come on, Tess, we’re going to the stands.”   
  
Tessa feels like her heart’s going to leap out of her chest when Scott grabs her wrist and confidently brushes past a still fuming Igor. She refuses to look at anything but Scott’s long strides and how he nearly thrusts her skate guards to her.   
  
“Thanks,” she says as quietly as she can, and follows him to the stands where he quickly picks the perfect seats to watch the entire ice. A moment later, there's an open bottle of water under her mouth. Tessa licks her lips and gratefully accepts his offer.   
  
“So, what was that?”   
  
Tessa's shoulders stiffen, but she refuses to look at him.   
  
“Nothing.”   
  
“Really, Tess? We've done this about fifty times now. Tell me what's going on, so we can fix it and move on.”   
  
_ Oh, I don't know, _ she thinks bitterly,  _ it's different because you kissed my fucking neck and best friends don't do that. _ __  
  
“I'm still sleepy,” she mutters instead, leaning back against his arm over her seat. “Sorry. Won't happen again.”   
  
“Yeah, right,” he scoffs. “I know you're lying. Tell me what's wrong. Did I do something?”   
  
This prompts Tessa to look at his face and it's his Tessa face, the one that's open and reminds her of the ten-year-old boy that stopped playing for the school hockey team because it was interfering with the time he spent on the ice with her. It's been a while since Tessa has drawn parallels between Scott at ten and Scott at eighteen.   
  
“No,” she says finally and looks away, her tongue feels heavy with the weight of the lie. “I'm sorry, it won't happen again.”   
  
Scott stays silent for a minute or two before he speaks again.   
  
“So, you definitely didn't react to me kissing your neck?”   
  
Tessa's head snaps towards him so fast she thinks she must have broken it. Her eyes are wide and horrified that he knows her sensitive spot before her first 'proper’ boyfriend could discover that on his own.   
  
“You did it on purpose?”   
  
Scott shrugs and Cocky Scott is back, the one she wishes she hated, but actually reminds her of all the bad boys the teen heroines in the books Meryl keeps giving her fall in love with.   
  
“Sure I did,” he says nonchalantly. “You know I get in the zone, Tess.”   
  
She does, and she doesn't want to tell him that he's so sexy when he does that. Immerses himself in a character so much that he becomes the character. It's something Tessa wishes she has ease with, but lately Marina has been telling her that if she just reacts to Scott’s grand proclamations of love on the ice it'll be more real for everyone watching.   
  
Well, fuck Marina for saying they should go the star-crossed-lovers route for their senior debut because Scott, just like in her dreams, is seduction itself. He woos her during  __ Valse Triste like she's the one that has the power to keep him from happiness, and it messes with her head, and she can't tell anyone because Meryl's a tattle tale, Tanith’s too old, Lauren hates Scott after he blew her off for Jess, and Scott himself will beat himself up and not give his all.   
  
So, Tessa suits her brain up with an armor of rationale and 'not-until-gold’ and smiles at him like there's nothing wrong.   
  
“I sure do,” she says, shaking her head and bumping her shoulder against his. “Want to get back on the ice again and be perfect?”   
  
“Yes, please,” he quips and just like that, Tessa's neatly wrapped the weird feeling in her groin when he pressed an open-mouthed smooch against her neck in a nondescript cardboard box, and pushes it to the farthest corner of her mind. It's dissociation, and she lets herself feel proud that she's succeeded in alienating her body's reaction to Scott’s lips.   
  
Their next run through is pretty perfect, and even Igor nods at them like they've adequately satisfied him. They laugh and joke as he drops her off at her foster parents’ house, and they get some studying done before lunch and practice in the afternoon.   
  
(She keeps her mouth shut even when she realizes she can predict where his relationship with Jessica stands by how handsy he gets with her on the ice.)   
  


Sometime after Vancouver and her second surgery, when she has a lot of free time on her hands, and Scott insists on being over affectionate with her, and wait on her hand and foot, she wishes she had said something or at the very least, make sure he’s on the same page as her when it comes to establishing a bright red line between how they feel on the ice and how they feel off of it. Maybe then, she wouldn’t have fallen into bed with him every time he looked at her a certain type of way. 

 

(She forgets and forgives a lot of things about him until it comes back to bite her in the ass.)

  
-   
  


Twenty-eight-year-old Scott is... interesting. 

 

Not in the way you try to figure out an abstract piece at the MBAM, but interesting in the way glass patterns in ancient cathedrals are. Breathtaking and hard to look away from. Tessa’s always known that the female character she most relates to from any 1990 movie is Dorothy Boyd from Jerry Maguire, and the primary reason she adored Renee Zellweger in the movie was when she tells her sister, “I love him for the man he almost is.”

 

Tessa thinks half of her conversations with Jordan about Scott between Vancouver and Sochi could have been easier if she had been able to put into words why she was pining for a man everyone dismissed as ‘talented but arrogant.’ Alas, Tessa had discovered the movie on a Transatlantic flight with no company and had spent the second half sobbing into her fat-free yoghurt cup. 

 

So, it’s kind of a shock when so suddenly after planning their come back and building a team of professionals and coaches in Montreal, she’s getting a front seat show to the man Scott Moir always had the potential to become, but never bothered to care. 

 

He’s present and attentive, his mind churns out ideas that raises eyebrows in a good way, and  _ gosh  _ is he committed to the entire process. 

 

He actively helps her with choosing their houses and the decor, visits the apartments and FaceTimes her when he realises there’s a dog park very close by, talks to finance consultants and budgets their expenses for the next two years without factoring in the money they bring in from shows and galas, gives thoughtful commentary on costumes and their music choices, and it’s all too much to handle for Tessa. 

 

She feels, for the first time in their careers, that  _ she’s  _ the excitable one; the one that feels like her brain is short circuiting and her heart’s running the fucking Boston Marathon. And she isn’t even  _ yearning  _ for his cold affections this time. 

 

For Valentine’s Day, he joins hands with all the other men at Gadbois and rents out a tiny movie theatre which plays romcoms all day. He prints out a poem from his favourite poets on scrapbook paper for every woman he knows on Women’s Day, and Madison Hubbell almost punches both Adri and Zach for not putting in the same effort as Scott did; Even Gabi is cordial to the pair of them for the rest of the week, and Patch reports the next morning that Billie-Rose keeps it under her pillow for safekeeping. 

 

Tessa gets a poem by Nikita Gill titled ‘The Theory of You’ and well, _ fuck _ , this is why it didn’t work out with Ryan and Mitch and Aleksander, isn’t it?

He’s  _ present _ and that’s what causes her to finally snap when they’re working on their SD choreo in Sam’s studio. He’s dancing behind her and his arms are all over her arms, and the intensity of his eyes alone takes her breath away. 

 

“Stop,” she wheezes, and moves the hell away from Scott. Looking at him, she says, “We need to talk.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Scott sounds genuinely worried and already moving towards her, to hold her and check on her. She shakes the hair from her eyes and gives perplexed Sam a hard look. “I need to talk to him alone.”

 

“Gotcha,” Sam says and gets out of the room, taking with him his iPod and leaving Scott and her staring at each other. 

 

“Tess, what’s -”

 

She never lets him finish though, because she’s actually  _ jumped  _ him, and is now busy threading her fingers through his hair, and meshing her lips with his.  _ God _ , she’d forgotten how thoroughly he kissed. When they pull back, his eyes are carefully vacant. 

 

For a split second, Tessa’s sure she has misread all the signs for the last month or so. The lingering hands and eyes, the almost reverential ghosting of his lips over her bare arms. 

 

“You realize we didn’t pencil this in our two-year plan, right?” He’s smiling at her, a touch hesitant, forearms supporting her weight. 

 

“Yeah, I do,” she says, tongue darting out to wet her lips experimentally. His liquid brown eyes darken. “Let’s keep doing this, and not talk about it until after Pyeongchang?”

 

He presses a kiss to her forehead and gently lets her down, until she’s standing before him and asking him to love her. 

 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says quietly, looking at anywhere but her, and the saddest, funniest thing is she understands. Understands that they did what she was suggesting once before and it had destroyed them.  _ We’re older now _ , she wants to say to him.  _ Look at Marie-France and Patrice. We can do it.  _

 

She doesn’t, though. She cups his cheeks and says, “Okay” instead.

 

When he lets her hands go, he kisses her knuckles and if Tessa hadn’t already fallen in love with this beautiful, wonderful, compassionate man before her, this was the moment she would have picked over the course of their nearly twenty year partnership to fall in love with. 

 

Clearing her throat, she tries to tell him as nonchalantly as possible, “Think we should put a window on it?”

 

He smiles at her then, eyes softening and smile getting wider, and Tessa’s sure she’s going to fall to the floor from how weak her knees get. 

 

“I don’t know, T,” he’s saying, but all Tessa can concentrate on is how he’s pulling her into him and how loud his heart’s beating. “I’ve kind of always wanted to know if sex is better with three Olympic gold medals on.”

 

And, well, it’s such a  _ Scott  _ thing to say, and she’s dying from laughter, not even registering Sam sneaking back in and being surprised that they’re laughing  _ with _ each other instead of throwing things  _ at _ each other. 

 

That night, Tessa pulls out the little planner that contains her life’s To-Do list she never lets anyone read and a sharpened pencil, and draws a little checkbox below the one legended ‘Enjoy every moment in Korea’, and writes next to it, ‘Scott’.

 

(Spoiler alert: He finds out that having sex with nothing but their Olympic medals on is not one of his kinks.) 

 

-

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the poem fic!Scott gives fic!Tessa: 
> 
> 'The Theory Of You' by Nikita Gill:  
> If you do not consider yourself  
> a testament to the impossible  
> let me help you understand:  
> you are an assortment of atoms,  
> carrying out its own fate  
> with your stardust covered hands.
> 
> Real nice, eh? Leave a kudos and a comment! Find me on twitter @wishfulcanadian


End file.
